Transmission and reflection peaks in ballistic transport

Abstract

An analytical treatment of quantum ballistic transport, for electrons in nanostructures, shows that Lorentzian energy-dependence peaks of transmission probability and of reflection probability are equally inherent. For both cases the resonance is associated with a local quasilevel state, having a decay time that is related to the Lorentzian energy half-width by the Breit-Wigner formula. For a reflection resonance, the peak value of reflection probability is shown to be 1 regardless of the symmetry of the system, in contrast to the transmission resonance case.